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Content can take many forms (or arguably any form!), but I'm sure we'd all agree that it still follows a sort of etiquette. For example, blogs typically get updated with newer, fresher content, sorted chronologically, with each post/article having its own dedicated URL; some posts will be evergreen and applicable for future readers, while some will be topical and applicable there-and-then (but may still be useful to refer to at a later date); and so on.

Generally speaking and for the most part, updating an old article or piece of content with new information may not make sense - a new post or perhaps a 'Part 2' as part of a series may be more appropriate with the etiquette that most people are used to. However, ultimately it depends on the content: the type of content, the nature of the content and what's best for the content in question.

There may be better terminology for it (suggestions in the Comments please!), but for the sake of argument I'll call it continually updated content, which is a single piece of content with a fixed page/URL that changes and evolves after its initial publication, whether on a frequent or infrequent basis. Here are a few examples:

Link Building Strategies - The Complete List by Jon Cooper (Point Blank SEO) - For those of you who are unfamiliar with this epic post, Jon has compiled "the most comprehensive list of link building strategies on the Web."It's big. Additionally, as link building strategies evolve, the post will be updated accordingly. It encourages people to refer to it and return to it on an on-going basis - not only that, but Jon encourages people to contribute additional strategies, if they think that he might've missed something.

SEOmoz's very own Google Algorithm Change History - Similarly, SEOmoz have compiled a list of all the major Google algorithm tweaks and updates, past and present. When a new one comes along, it gets added to the top of the list, gradually growing in size as the years (and changes/updates) roll by. Dr. Pete talks about it in more detail as part of his recent Big Content post.

The beauty of this type of content is that you can legitimately push the outreach further than other pieces of content: with one of the updates to his Link Building Strategies post, Jon tweeted about it; when SEOmoz add new algorithm change updates, theytweetaboutit. This does two things:

It encourages people who are familiar with the content to check out the latest version, to see what's new - it reminds them of its existence,

For those who have never come across the content before (maybe they missed it when it was first published), it introduces them to it.

If you were to push a regular piece of content that much and that often, you'd risk losing followers or getting reported as spam, but if you have a piece of content that you update now and again, you can push it further - it extends the outreach indefinitely (or as much as the content is updated).

I recently created a piece of content that fits into this category. While I'm sure that Jon's and SEOmoz's examples would probably generate many more insights (as they operate on a much larger scale and would each generate higher volumes of traffic), I still wanted to share with you my experiences and observations with my blog post, from the outreach side of things: earning links, social shares, rankings and - ultimately - traffic.

A Continually Updated Content Case Study

At the end of August, I published a blog post titled Awesome Web & Tech Events in Cardiff - September 2012 on my blog, SEOno. As it says in the introduction to the post, it came about after realising that Cardiff had a lot of web/tech events and conferences taking place in September, and I knew that compiling a list of them in one place would be useful for South Wales-based people who have an interest in the web/tech sector.

When the post was first published, it contained six event listings, but as the month went on, I added three more events that I'd either missed out originally or announced post-publication. In addition to the original outreach, with each update I informed my Twitter followers. The outreach was extended - I was legitimately able to tweet about a post on 18th September (which first went live weeks earlier) because it was still relevant and useful to people.

From 25th August until 30th September, the post received 195 pageviews, 173 (nearly 90%) of which were unique:

As you can see above, the outreach in this example can be separated into six sections: three early on (to coincide with the initial publication) and three later on (to coincide with the updates). Here's how I went about it...

Outreach Phase 1 - 25th Aug: The Big Push

I shared the post on the big four: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.

On Twitter, in addition to doing a standalone tweet...

...I also notified each individual event via @mention, to let them know about it:

To make it less cheeky (less hey-check-this-out-guys!), in most cases I asked them to confirm if the logo usage was ok and if the details were correct, or if they could provide me with more information and/or a logo, which I think legitimises the approach a bit more. All of them were happy to be included and most of them RTed it as well, which was awesome.

I also took the opportunity to @mention other local event organisers I knew about, asking if they had an event planned in September but hadn't announced it just yet. At the very least, I was making them aware of the post and offering to help them out - building the relationship.

In hindsight, I should've perhaps spread this out over the course of a couple of hours or days, as I realised afterwards that if anyone who was following me was also following some of the other events, their Home Feed would've been hit pretty hard. I didn't get anyone complaining to me or anything, but I could've annoyed (and potentially lost) a follower or two in doing so.

On Facebook, in addition to sharing it on my personal profile's Wall, I also shared it with CardiffStart's FB Group and its 200+ members. I wouldn't have done this usually (with other SEOno posts), but from an outreach perspective, it's an ideal audience, given the post's content.

Then lastly, I threw it on my personal LinkedIn and Google+ profiles for good measure.

With this big initial push, the post obtained a fair few visits and pageviews (65, 33% of all pageviews across the date range), but as the above Google Analytics graph shows, it still obtained pageviews throughout the remainder of August and across September.

Outreach Phases 2 & 3 – 28th & 31st Aug: The Reminders

For any new SEOno post, I usually do one reminder/follow-up tweet a few days later. If I'm particularly proud of a post, I'll be a little cheeky and do two, spread out across a few days. In this case I felt that it was more justifiable because I'd published the post on a Saturday, so I took the "Over the weekend..." approach and tweeted it on Monday:

A few more days later, I did an "In case you missed it..." style tweet, which is something I usually do with all my posts, just in case people missed the first tweet:

Referring back to the GA graph, you can see that the two biggest peaks in traffic were around this time, coinciding with the initial push (on the first day of publication) and one of the reminders. But there were also a few slight jumps in traffic over the rest of the month, coinciding with the updates.

Outreach Phases 4, 5 & 6 - 8-18th Sept: The Updates

As mentioned earlier, I was able to justify additional outreach with additional tweets, each time the post was updated. These gained RTs as well:

Link Acquisition

At present, I can see that there are at least two inbound links pointing to the post, coming from two blogs. What's interesting to note is their publication dates. While one of them was published in late August (coinciding with its initial publication), the other was published in mid-September (coinciding with the reminders). In this instance, Geoff of halfblog.net was already familiar with the post (he'd actually RTed it previously), but you could argue that one of my later update tweets might have reminded him and inspired him to link to it from his post.

My point is that this type of content can easily encourage links at later dates - well after the initial publication date - in the same vein as RTs and other types of social shares.

Long-term - Traffic from the SERPs

Jon and Dr. Pete would be able to give more insight into what this type of content can do for you in terms of the SERPs. Jon tracked (and has commented upon) his post's ranking, which currently ranks 1st for "link building strategies". Meanwhile, the SEOmoz post ranks high for many keywords around "google algorithm history/changes/update" and even ranks on page 1 for just "google algorithm". Jon's example is especially interesting as it took him a while to rank for it - it could have been the case that later links were what gave it the final push into the top spot.

While my example does not really apply to the longer term SERPs side of things, as I didn't really give it a keyword/SEO focus and also because it's timely content rather than evergreen, it has still received a trickle of traffic from the long-tail, for people searching for Cardiff-based events (both in general and related to web/tech) and even some of the specific events by name. Some examples:

events in cardiff september 2012

cardiff tech events

cardiff events sept 2012

cardiff blogs maldron september 4th

cardiff cake mixer

Pro Tips

If you decide to run some continually updated content, here are a few other things to consider:

Publish it on your own site/blog - Content like this might make for a great guest blogging opportunity, but I'd advise against it. For updating purposes, it makes sense to publish it somewhere where you'll have 100% control of it when you require it. Unless you have a very good relationship with the guest blog owner and they're speedy on the updates, your own site/blog is your best bet - the last thing you'd want is for updates to take days before they go live each time, especially if making sure that it's updated ASAP is crucial. An in-between could be to give it its own dedicated site (à la MozCast), so that you are acquiring external links while still retaining full control over it.

While my example may not knock one's proverbial socks off given its low pageview and link stats, I wanted to highlight the principle more than anything. This can easily be applied to bigger projects on bigger sites, and - depending on the industry - could be an opportunity that's there for the taking. While it does align with Dr. Pete's thinking on Big Content, the content doesn't necessarily have to be 'Big' - a post on local events wasn't a big undertaking to put together, but it came in handy as a go-to resource for a fair few people.

What are your dealings with continually updated content? Are there any other case studies or success stories out there? I'd love to hear about more examples in the comments section below.

About steviephil —
I'm a freelance SEO trading under the name Morgan Online Marketing, based in Cardiff, South Wales, UK. I also run an SEO blog called SEOno and can be found on Twitter here: @steviephil

The post itself didn't actually receive any blog comments unfortunately, however there was some discussion of it on Twitter (beyond the @mentions I've referred to in the post) and FB (there were a few comments left on it).

As for LI and FB, I targeted one local FB group with 200+ members. I didn't touch any LI Groups - truth be told, I'm not a heavy LI user, but had I been smart, it probably would've been very appropriate and very helpful to a number of local web/tech groups. Something to think about for next time!

Hi Steve, I enjoyed this post very much. I especially liked the tip about choosing to name the URL without including the date for posts that are continually updated. I have done one post on my blog that I periodically update...in fact, it probably is overdue for an update given that it was a list of high-quality Web directories (oh, I can feel the slings and arrows now!)....this is definitely one that needs to be frequently monitored and updated given that many Web directories have gone down the toilet.

Interestingly enough, despite everyone poo-pooing Web directories, this is by far and away the post on my blog that gets the most traffic, so it's definitely worth keeping up to date.

Hi Dana, thanks for the kind words. Your high-quality Web directories list is a perfect example of this type of content! Are you making the most of the outreach, i.e. letting people know when new directories are added and/or old directories are removed? I'd definitely consider at least tweeting it as-and-when changes happen (so long as they're not too frequent and/or the size of the update warrants it)!

Just running with the theme of your post, don't you think you would be
better off writing a post without liming yourself to the month, such as: 'Awesome Web &
Tech Events in Cardiff' and keep that continually updated with new, upcoming
events?

Hi David, that's a very good point! Funnily enough, a couple of people on the FB Group asked if I'd do it as a constant, rolling thing as well.

To be honest, I only intended it to be a one-off (and I've clearly missed the boat if I did want to continue it as it is, given that we're always past halfway in October!), but given its popularity, it would make sense for me to consider a more permanent fixture of this type of content. I might consider it from January 2013 onwards. We'll see!

Indeed, Yoav! :-) After all, it'd be a shame if they were completely unaware that they had been referenced within the article. With that in mind, I think it's absolutely fair enough to @mention them and let them know.

Think of it from a linker's perspective. If you link to a piece of content like that, they won't have to worry about changing the link in the future, it breaking, or any trust-related issues (longer, updated content is more trusted).You also have the side effect of the gift that keeps on giving. As more & more people link to it, more & more people will trust it and link to it themselves, seeing that others have. It's definitely long term, but curating one master piece of content is better than writing 10 good posts. Heck, for me, my Strategies post is what I'm known for!Great job Steve, love the analysis :)

Thanks Jon. To be fair, I guess this Web/Tech Events post is what I'm now known for, especially outside of local SEO & online marketing circles.

I don't want to put you on the spot, but would you be willing to share some data relating to your Strategies post's update? When you tweeted about it* in April you received 12 RTs and 4 favourites - did you notice that GA data for the page receive a significant hit? Were any of them new visits? I'd love to know!

In terms of link stats, the HP is higher, but not my a huge amount - it has nearly 50% more LRDs and almost double the links, but only a slightly higher PA.

However, look at the difference in social stats! That said, it's understandable that a piece of content will inevitably gain more FB shares/Likes and tweets compared to a homepage. The Google +1s are interesting though...!

If only we could get a breakdown of when those FB shares/Likes and tweets appeared on the Strategies post, eh?

[Note to editors: Sorry, just realised that I've unveiled some 'PRO only' data there. Please feel free to remove if you think that it's necessary to do so.]

Hey Steve, thanks for such in-depth insight into how you made this process work. How were the shares of your shares? Do they coincide with the page views (# of likes, re-tweets, and +'s)? Thanks for sharing!

Hi George. Yep, there's definitely correlation. In one of the above comments, I give a bit more insight into referral traffic from the social media sites based on Google Analytics data. It was pushed on Twitter the most, so most of the traffic came from there; FB was shared on a popular group, so that was next; G+ and LI were only shared on my personal profiles, so they were the least. Hope that helps!

I always enjoy reading case studies that aren't about the big guys. Your page views and social shares are similar to what ours would be with a similar outreach, so it was relatable. I never would tweet so many reminders about a post, but for the ones that are frequently updated, I guess it's something I should consider.

Thanks Marisa. I thought having such a small-fry case study might be criticised by some readers, but let's face it - if you stuck a few zeroes at the end of the pageviews/social share numbers, I'm sure you'd still see a similar pattern and a similar looking graph shape.

Yeah I think that would certainly apply as well, something to do with statistics and how things approach a normal distribution when amplified. Not sure if i remember my statistics correctly though hahaha.I've always been a supporter of continuously updated content. It makes life easier for everyone - not only the readers but the writers as well.

Excellent post Steve, you have choose current trend for the written article, Dr. Pete written brilliant post on big content, your strategies of marketing big content and different forms of content is really nice. Updating content frequently is useful for the getting attention from Google as well as users. These all tips are really best for us to deal with panda and penguin updates.

Interesting. In addition to being continually updated, it also helps to have your content involve other people as much as possible. In your case, you have a good reason to Twitter @ people who have events, and they have an incentive to visit it and link to it. If it was just a regular article (or even an useful comprehensive guide), you probably won't have as many people interested in it.

Thanks Henley. Precisely! My rule is never to @mention people letting them know about a post unless it directly involves them or I know that they will definitely be interested (e.g. perhaps they asked me to let them know).

I see some people who'll spam @mentions or #hashtags whenever they release a new post or want to advertise an upcoming event, which is an approach I disagree with - and I'm sure I'm not the only one!

Would love to hear more research about how effective continually updated contents are. It seems like a great idea - the link is the same every time and people will know where to link/look for stuff each time.

Love the idea of continually updated content. I've seen it work in a lot of sites. I think it follows the concept about Directories and Pages. There's a reason why these work and I'm glad you've pointed it out here. Thanks

Nice post Steve - this kind of recurring value for blog posts is something that content publishers "should" factor into schedules, but like, as you say they often need to be much larger resource behind them to make them worthwhile.Would have been nice to see more social networks added to your promotion list and how you can utilise each one differently over periods of time (i.e. Twitter, then facebook, then Google+ etc) to maximise the length and value of your return.Thanks again

I did FB, G+ and LI to begin with, but only in the first instance ("OP1"). I think Twitter lends itself more to gentle reminders coinciding with updates and so I would've felt a little uncomfortable about pushing the post on the other platforms, even to coincide with post updates.

If it helps, here's some data from Google Analytics looking specifically at referral traffic from social media platforms to that particular page:

Twitter: 50

Facebook: 5

Misc (HootSuite*): 5

Google+: 1

LinkedIn: 1

* I've put HS down as 'Misc' as it could be Twitter, FB or something else - I imagine it's Twitter though.

Also, '(direct)' was 35, which might include bit.ly links and other URL shorteners, given that they redirect (and there's no mention of bit.ly in my GA, even though it's the main shortener I used when conducting the outreach). If anyone can confirm this to be the case then that'd be great - it'd also mean that Twitter was more like 85 rather than 50 (or somewhere in-between the two).

And as for G+ and LI: only 1 click each! That said, it could be the case that I didn't utilise them effectively than there being anything wrong with the platforms (but I guess that's open to debate and opinion, hehe!)

Superb case study. Although we see a lot of content about link bait, content and outreach, we don't really ever get to read case studies covering the on going development of content and the effect this has on traffic/links etc.

Great Post Steve!!! i already use some of the techniques from http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies and found some of the interesting and new technique which are really helpful in this situation where every time Google changes his algorithm.